The Ills of Capitalism

The Ills of Capitalism
by Ricardo Santiago

Within the capitalist society that we live in today, the workers, that is the people that create all wealth, receive only enough wealth in the form of wages to allow them to maintain the standard of living necessary to continue working, and to produce new workers. By the time the product that the workers create goes through the manufacturer to wholesaler to retail process, and after excessive taxation, they are left barley able to afford even a small portion of the product of their own labor.

An example of this would be the worker at an American McDonald's restaurant who receives the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. Generously assuming that it takes a worker five minutes to produce a hamburger, in one hour the worker could produce twelve hamburgers; cooked, packaged, and ready to sell. At the end of his shift, if the worker wished to purchase as many hamburgers as he had made in one hour, twelve, he would need to give his employer about two and a half hours worth of wages. The worker must make thirty hamburgers to receive twelve. This inequity is obviously unjust and exploitive, yet is the exact way the capitalist system works.

Worker's don't receive the full product of their labor, simply because they don't own the tools of production. Capitalists, that is business owners, investors, and bankers, own them; and even though the tools were created by and are operated by workers, the capitalists receive the majority of wealth created by them. This creates gross inequity, which is seen all around us on a daily basis. Bankers and Investors, who cannot themselves create any actual material goods, and who's only "work" consists of manipulating figures, live in lavish extravagance, while the workers who actually create the wealth, sacrificing their own health, live in a constant state of dependance.

Even those worker's considered successful are not immune from this state. The "middle class" American worker who drives a new car and lives in a nice house in the suburbs is dependant on the capitalist to maintain this standard of living. He is indebted to the bankers for the loan on his home, which he will not own until he has worked the majority of his life away, and is no longer of use to the capitalists. Should he not be able to make a monthly payment or two to the bankers for the loan on his car, it will be quickly taken away, leaving him with nothing to show for all the time he spent working to make the regular payments for the last year.

Moreover, the worker is not considered as a human being, but a mere tool in capitalist society. A commodity that can be bought and sold, another replaceable piece in the capitalist machine. When the worker creates more product than can be sold by the capitalist owner, or a machine comes along to that can complete the worker's job, or another man comes along that will complete the job for less money, the worker is disposed of. The production value of the worker is nothing more than another figure to be manipulated by the bankers and investors.

In a sense the capitalists actually own workers in capitalist society. The capitalists own all tools of work, they own they tools that create material goods, they own the trucks that ship the goods, and they own the stores in which the goods are sold. If you want to live you have no choice but to work, if you don't work you can't supply yourself and your family with the basic necessities of life. Your only means to work is through a capitalist, who owns the tools necessary to work, and who owns your job and everything you produce. In order to gain access to the tools, you must ask the capitalist for his permission. If he allows you the privilege of using his tools you must agree to give him all that you produce with them, with the exception of a small percentage. Enough to keep you alive and working.

The "democratic" representative governments, and their military and police forces, which are so loudly proclaimed to be the agencies of the people, operate solely in the interest of the capitalists. When the people pour into the streets in protest of the actions of the government, they are repressed by force by the police and military forces. Since these are agencies of the people, should they not be at the will of the people? What about the unemployed, especially those who come to the realization that there is no meaningful work available to them that will better their current standard of living, and that they can't afford an education? When they have no choice left to them then to act out criminally in desperation, the police are there immediately to arrest them. The capitalist system that creates the conditions that force people into crime have only one solution for it, to lock the so-called criminals in a cage.

A large percentage of the money the government collects from workers in the form of taxes is spent to keep prisoners in jail. Food, clothing, materials to build jails, guard's weapons, etc are purchased from large corporations, which are of course owned by capitalists. In many countries a percent of taxes are also spent in the form of social welfare, since capitalism creates the lower class, it makes the system seem to be more just to the unknowing. When this social welfare is distributed (almost exclusively in very meager amounts), it is spent on products that are also owned by the capitalists. Capitalist society assures that all wealth eventually filter back to the capitalists.

There is no excuse for poverty, but within capitalism it is unavoidable. The majority of the world remains painfully impoverished, while an elite few control the majority of the wealth. Why should a select few control the majority of wealth of the world? Because a man is born with a different last name than you or I, should they be more privileged? All material things come from the planet that we live on. The entire earth, from the bottom of the deepest sea, to the top of the highest mountain, is made up of raw materials, at the will of the hands of the human race. Who is it that takes these separate raw materials from around our planet and transforms them into a finished usable product? It is the worker. Who should take credit for an artist's masterpiece? The owner of the company that sold him his brush and paint, or the artist himself? Workers must become conscious of their roles, and understand that although they create all wealth, they receive a very small percentage of it; and with most everything they purchase, they put their small percentage of wealth back into the hands of the capitalists.

Capitalists control the modern economy and political system, with no regard for the worker whatsoever. As such, the workers should have no regard for the capitalists; and through revolutionary practices should overthrow the capitalist system and gain control over their own lives.

 

Are there no examples of countries reducing poverty with free-market reforms?

There are many causes of poverty:

Lack of diversity in the economy.

Corrupt gov'ts looting the treasury and mis-using aid.

Poor educational system.

Bad economic policies by the gov't etc.

 

I don't believe it's right to live only by manipulating money and benefitting exorbitantly from the differential. Capitalism certainly does lend itself to greed and exploitation, and our society is far too top-heavy.

But I'm all for hierarchy to a smaller extent. Labor should be well-compensated, but the product a laborer produces isn't always 'their' masterpiece. It's not necessarily that worker that conceptualized, engineered and developed that product, or that possessed the organizational talent to bring together the many different things that had to be aligned to make the product possible. Left to that worker's own resources, the product prob'ly wouldn't've been made. Even if another person didn't have a hand in making a product, that is, a particular unit, that they made possible the production of that unit allows them to fairly derive profit from it. From this will come hierarchy.

The problem is bloated administration. There's nothing to keep the system fair. Those with the 'power' to better regulate it are the ones most benefitting from its inequity. There's very little we can do 'bout it. But, those on top ultimately don't have the power, either; so top-heavy a society can't support itself forever. Not that people will be able to replce it with something that's an improvement.

Capitalism is just another faulted ideology of man. None of 'em will work. Some people have their euphoric, utopian visions and believe they have the answers, but it's all foolishness. No system we cook up will escape corruption. They're all a means of oppression or made into a means of oppression, and some are worse than others.

 

If capitalism is bad then why does free-market Botswana have one of the best economies in Africa?

It does have a problem with high unemployment,but that's mainly because of a lack of diversity in industry to provide jobs which they have been working on by attracting more investment to the country.


Lessons from the Fastest-Growing Nation: Botswana?

GDP in the diamond-rich economy has skyrocketed thanks to free-market principles and prudent management. And its AIDS offensive is showing Africa the way

Quick--name the country that's grown the fastest over the last few decades. It's not any of the four Asian Tigers, though they come close. It's not China--its economy didn't get going until the 1980s. Surely it wouldn't be any country in Africa, where every decade is a lost decade.

Wrong. The country posting the highest gross-domestic-product growth since 1966 is Botswana...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_34/b3796629.htm

 

Okay, I don't feel like reading the whole thing, so I'll just talk about what I did read.

First about creating wealth, it's not just dumb labor that creates it, what is labor with out direction? Someone must come up with the ideas which are what actually create the wealth. The workers are emrely a tool.

And now the McDonald's analogy, that rather completely ignores the fact that the supplies for the hamburger cost money. It would make sense for him to be able to afford at least as many as he makes, if he already owned the supplies with which he made them. So he is paid only to put together pieces, it also costs money to purchase the pieces he merely sticks together.

 

Okay, the McDonalds thing is really bothering me. I mean, of course the cost of the burger is more than he is paid to make it, even without accounting for any sort of profit it still would be, because the price of the burger = his pay to make it + cost of supplies.. So on a per burger basis, how could he possibly make more per burger than each burger costs? It jsut doesn't work. Even assuming the materials just magically existed he could still never make more than the exact cost per burger, but a business could not run like that because then it has no capital with whcih to continue itself and especially not grow, considering each burger has to pay for him to make it + supplies + a bit of profit + plus all sorts of other various shit like the other people working there besides those who make the burgers, and like the general upkeep of the store etc. It's simple math.

 

'Cause it's all relative. A system isn't consequentially made good by the existence of other, worse systems. Better can still be bad.

 

Yes I suppose living in one of the richest places in the world is an ill.

 

Walter Williams is a pimp.

 

Ironically.... I saw 77 years in life expectancy in 2003, and I thought... Wow, perhaps I have done a mistake, and perhaps Botswana is not that bad after all.

But I had another window open, with statistics of Cuba. I was actually watching statistics from Cuba, not Botswana. Again, ironically, I was searching for educational statistics, and yet again I thought "perhaps this country is not so bad", but yet again, I managed to press the wrong window.


Here are the statistics of Botswana:


Under-5 mortailty rate in 1990 was 58. Now, let's look at year 2003. It's as high as 112.

Life expectancy in the year 1970 was 55 years. In 2003? 39 years. The life expectancy is 39 years. Thus, life expectancy has fallen by 16 years the past 30 years.
Illiteracy: 25 percent for males, 20 percent for females. That's approximately 23 percent, isn't it? 23 percent illiteracy.


24 percent of the population live below 1 dollar a day.


You see, when you use pro-capitalist indicators, the operation expression is: "the greater wealth of a select few, the greater wealth for the entire population". But you see, that is not how reality is. People in Botswana live a hell while a select few live in luxury.

Source: UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/botswana_statistics.html

 

How is that Botswana life expectancy and illiteracy connected to capitalism?

Botswana does have an AIDS problem that's affecting life expectancy,but the country is tackling it and is considered a model for the rest of Africa.

I did mention that the country does have high unemployment. This is mainly because of a lack of diversity in it's economy. Diamonds are the countries main source of wealth and you only need so many people employed for that industry. Botswana also has very few other natural resources and it's a landlock country. The point about Botswana is that it has done a good job of making the most of what it has to work with. If the country was not landlock and had the resources of a Nigeria or South Africa it would probably be doing even better.

Botswana's efforts to tackle the spread of HIV should serve as an example to the rest of the developing world, a leading expert has suggested...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3154085.stm

 

Life expectancy is connected to the social system, to a very great extent. If people die from malnutrition, thirst, disease and hunger, life expectancy falls.

By whom? Certainly not by me. And not by many others, either.

Yes, having the people surviving on a dollar a day while you and your pals have your own swimming pool and hundreds of aeroplanes and luxury cars, without creating a giant revolution is pretty impressive. I will have to agree with that. But perhaps the reason is because they spend 8 percent on the military?

Can you explain why 23 percent of the population is illiterate? I mean, if you would just change production of porn magazines to the elite to educational books, it might be that hard, don't you think?

Why are 10 percent of kids in child marriages? Is child marriages considered a model for Africa?

 

Yet property is theift, lets have a crash course on so called "ownership society". Capitalist own the means of production yet they can't turn raw resources into wealth by themselfs, thus they get the working class to do it by offering them wages so they can sit back and steal wealth from the working class as workers are never paid the true value of their labour. If workers were fully paid for their labour then profit would be impossible as every penny of profit is stolen from the pokets of the workers, thus when a comapany says it made a billion in profit that billion is money stolen from their workers.

Thus since Capitalist are stealing, workers have the right to take back what is rightful theirs like their tried to do in Argentina in 2002 by telling the Capitalist to literally go fuck themselfs (their slogon was if the Capitalist don't like it they can go fuck themselfs) as the means of production belongs to the Argentina workers thus they were liberating the means of production that was stolen from them by the Capitalist pigs.

So back to the "Thou shalt not steal", it is not thieft if your are taking back what someone stole from you.

 

Communism,

But is having a capitalist economy the cause of those problems in Botswana?

Child brides may be a cultural practice there that has nothing to do with capitalism.

Has capitalism been shown to be the reason for it's illitercy rate? I mean is capitalism anti-literacy?

Again the poverty in Botwasna is greatly influnced by the lack of diversity in it's economy and not having enough other natural resources and it's landlock location not by capitalism.

Many of the post-colonial African countries that tried Communism/Socialism are way worse off than Botswana. So Communism isn't the answer.

 

National Literacy Programme

On another front, Botswana created the National Literacy Programme in the Department of Non-formal Education (DNFE) to ensure everyone access to basic education. Its initiatives include the Literacy at the Workplace Project, Income Generating Projects, the Village Reading Rooms, and English as a Second Language.
The Literacy at the Workplace Project, though conceived in the 1980s, started as an organised initiative in 1991. The purpose of this project is to reach non-literate people at their places of work. The general operational strategy is that the DNFE and the target organisation work together to identify non-literate workers...

Conclusion

Botswana's Ministry of Education says that the country is two percent short of achieving universal access to primary school as envisaged by the Millennium Development Goals. This compares favourably with most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which have very low primary completion rates, many less than 50 percent.
Botswana has been able to counter low primary school rates by using its revenues from diamonds wisely, thus making it a model for Africa...

http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_10225.html

 

I'd say, to a large degree, yes.

I remember reading some time ago that child marriage is closely related to economy. Larger families forming. Creating larger economic ties, thereby a more secure future. It is of little suprise that, when you find poverty, you will very likely find child marriage. We may say it is a trait of poverty, but when capitalism creates poverty, may we blame it on capitalism?

Poor people with no opportunity to enter school have a difficult time becoming literate.

Is poverty anti-literacy?

Of course, that is a problem. But many nations have overcome those problems. Botswana, on the other hand, has not. It's not just that, but human development has actually gotten worse, not better.

I do not have much indepth knowledge of Botswana. But I ask you a question, out of my own curiosity... When did the liberalization of Botswana begin?

Communism has never been tried. And it's impossible in a undeveloped country. It demands a highly developed society. Socialism... I guess that depends on how you would define socialism? Is simply an economy controlled by the state, socialist? I personally do not think so.

Look at Cuba. Once a colonial country. But it still is a lot better than Botswana. It's not fair to compare to different nations like that, but consider this... When is the illiteracy going to dissapear in Botswana? It took Cuba almost just a few years. From 1959 to 1961. And I believe Cuba had the same illiteracy rate Botswana has now. So how many years is Botswana going to use to get rid of illiteracy? Approximately 3 years, like Cuba? Or 30 years? Or 300 years?

 

These are statistics Human Development Reports:

Children underweight for age (% under age 5) (HPI..1), 1995-200313
Population living below $1 a day (%), 1990-200323.5
Population living below $2 a day (%), 1990-200350.1
Probability at birth of not surviving to age 40 (% of cohort), 2000-05 69.1

Life expectancy at birth (years), 1970-197556.1
Life expectancy at birth (years), 2000-200536.6


Public expenditure on education (as % of GDP), 1990 6.2
Public health expenditure (% of GDP), 2002 3.7


Population undernourished (% total), 1990-199223
Population undernourished (% total), 2000-200232
Children underweight for age (% under age 5), 1995-200313 4
Children under height for age (% under age 5), 1995-200323
Infants with low birthweight (%), 1998-200310
Survey Year1993 9
Share of income or consumption (%) - Poorest 10%0.7
Share of income or consumption (%) - Poorest 20%2.2
Share of income or consumption (%) - Richest 20%70.3
Share of income or consumption (%) - Richest 10%56.6
http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=BWA


I don't see why Botswana is such a great country, with the exception that it could be a good place for billionaires to open sweatshops.

 

Botswana has had a free market economy since indepence in 1966. According to the info I've read it has had one of the fastest growing economies since then.

Child brides(which I disagree with) could be related to poverty and also culture. This is also found in some parts of Asia.

As far as Botswana's life expectancy,it's HIV/AIDS that's the problem not capitalism.

Before Aids struck, countries such as Botswana were prospering, with an average life span for its people of almost 75 years. But the infection rate in the country is now the highest in the world: 39% of adults have the HIV virus, which will kill them within nine or 10 years unless they receive expensive western medicines...(BBC link above)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,751317,00.html


Literacy is being improved in Bostswana as my above info shows. I'am not familiar with the differences between Cuba and Botswana as far as literacy that could be affecting this for both countries.

I've read that the pre-Castro illiteracy rate wasn't that bad to begin with as far as Latin American standards before Castro took over. If that's true,then Castro didn't have to come from too far behind to improve things.

 

Statistics like that does not take into account the conditions of ordinary people. If you want to measure the wealth of the capitalist class, fine, perhaps such methods will work, at least to an extent. But you cannot measure the living standards of ordinary people by looking at how many diamonds
Botswana Company AS produce every year.

So are you saying no one dies because of undernourished in Botswana? Considering 32 percent of the population of Botswana is undernourished... Considering the majority of the population live below 2 dollars a day.... Do you really think so?

50 percent illiteracy in the rural areas.

But while we are at it... Let's talk about the standards of pre-revolutionary Cuba.

From the book Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution:

"The 1953 census divided the population of Cuba into 57 percent urban, 43 percent rural. Housing in the cities was generally much better than in the country districts, In fact, the most common rural dwelling unit is not a house at all but a hut, called a bohío, generally made in whole or part from material obtained from the royal palm tree. The roof is usually thatched, the floor is most often the earth itself. Sometimes there are inferior partitions, sometimes not. One of the bohíos we visited in the tobacco district of Pinar Del Río had a single partition which seperated teh samll kitchen from the rest of the hut. Wood chips ere used for fuel for cooking. There was no running water, no electric light, no toilet. This was "home" for 12 people"

"When a country has a "normal" unemoyment rate of 25 percent, it is a sure sign that something is wrong with the economic system. So great an imbalance in the economy is found in most nations of the world only rarely, in periods of deep crisis. Cuba's phenomenally large rate of unemployment, year in and year out, was a reflection of the fact that its economy was in a permanent state of crisis."


Cuba was known as "the whore of the Caribbean". While the U.S. mafia and U.S. Marines and the U.S. elite were having sex with malnurished and desperate Cuban prostitutes trying to feed their children, the Cuban people were suffering. As far as I can remember, one out of thirty women were prostitutes.

 

Like I mentioned earlier Botswana does have high unemployment,which is contributing to it's poverty and malnutrition. Botswana also sometimes has problems with droughts which can affect crops.

The high unemployment is the result of the economy not being diverse enough and not because of a free-market economy or bad governance. In fact Botswana is considered one of the best governed countries.

Botswana does have disadvantages related to it's location and lack of resourses,but it has done the best job with what it has. This is why many view it as a model for other African countries because if a country like Nigeria were to run it's economy and have a democratic system similar to Botswana's considering it's oil wealth and seaport location,it would be a very wealthy nation and not the 3rd world country it currently is.

Here's a good breakdown of the country's uemployment problem:

Unemployment, Botswana’s second most pressing problem, receives less attention internationally. But a solution is crucial to the nation's continued growth and prosperity. Despite having the world's highest GDP growth rate for decades, unemployment is currently estimated at around 40 percent(23.8% according to other stats?). A paradox?

Although Botswana seems to defy most of the stereotypical "curse" indicators, the nation does suffer from a weakly diversified economy. Diamond mining is a capital-intensive industry and employs only a small workforce (only about 6,000 out of a workforce of 500,000). Moreover, diamonds are a non-renewable resource. Therefore, economic diversification is essential to future growth.

Botswana's leaders are searching for ways to diversify the economy and attract greater foreign direct investment to increase employment and continue growth. This is a challenge, particularly because neighboring South Africa holds much of the same resources and has a much larger labor force, a larger domestic market, and seaports. To many foreign investors, Botswana looks a bit like the ugly stepsister of South Africa.

Nevertheless, Botswana has a great deal to offer....

http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/1000.html